Cameron Diaz helps 'Bad Teacher' make the grade

You know those films about inspirational teachers, people who make a difference? Films like "Stand and Deliver?" "Lean on Me?" "Dangerous Minds?"

Cameron Diaz, in an image from 'Bad Teacher.'

Elizabeth Halsey knows them well.

Because she shows all of them in her class, over and over, so she can put her head down on her desk and sneak a nap and maybe recover from her latest hangover.

Yes, Elizabeth is a "Bad Teacher."

And the film in which she's the anti-heroine is definitely in the defiant tradition of "Bad Santa" -- taking supposedly child-friendly figures and turning them into crude, drunken, equal-opportunity offenders.

And getting big laughs while doing it.

It seemed like a 50/50 gamble going in. Director Jake Kasdan did the intermittently funny "The TV Set" and the mostly unfunny "Walk Hard"; the screenwriters have plenty of "The Office" credits but also bear the blame for the unbearable "Year One."

This one could have gone either way.

That it succeeds is partly due to those filmmakers, too. Kasdan keeps things moving so fast you tend not to mind the gags that don't work (mostly ones that confuse being rude and raunchy with just being stupid and grade-school gross).

Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake, in 'Bad Teacher.'

The screenwriters have taken the time to write more than one good character, too; the movie's called "Bad Teacher, " but Elizabeth is hardly the only not-quite-ready-for-adulthood misfit who stumbles through it, nor the most sympathetic one.

And the fact that there are so many good comic bits here allowed Kasdan to assemble a great comic cast.

The movie, of course, belongs to Cameron Diaz. She's always projected a sort of girlfriend-gone-wild sassiness that suggested she's a hell of a lot of fun after a couple of mango margaritas; "Bad Teacher" is one of the few films that's allowed her to show that.

And not only does she show it, she flaunts it, from a wardrobe that's tighter than next year's school budget to a vocabulary that's definitely not on any standardized test.

She's not alone. The wonderful Lucy Punch -- the golddigger from "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger" and who shot "A Little Bit of Heaven" in New Orleans in early 2010 with Kate Hudson -- is a nagging toothache as a too-perfect teacher. Comic actors like Thomas Lennon drop by for brief but marvelous scenes, and Jason Segal is a menschy gym teacher.

Justin Timberlake, however, remains too cool to really commit to his oddball character, a substitute teacher that the man-hungry Diaz fixates on. (The fact that two performers used to be an item, though, gives an extra level of comic discomfort to their scenes together).

And for a movie that's supposed to be one long dirty joke, "Bad Teacher" couldn't be any more incorrect -- or at least topical. For all her talk, Elizabeth never actually has sex, nor are there many jabs at teacher's unions or pushy parents -- two extremely fertile topics for satire.

But the film is fast and often funny. And while it's not for children -- really -- I bet the adults who just spent a school year with them are going to love it.

Note: Newhouse News critic Stephen Whitty wrote this review.

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BAD TEACHER3 stars, out of 4

Snapshot: An R-rated comedy about a teacher who's not so much a role model as she is the "before" picture in an ad for a rehab center.

What works: Not only is the script filled with good laughs, but there are good characters, too, played by a strong cast.

What doesn't: There are times when the screenwriters confuse being raunchy with just being stupid.